offbeat 15 May 2015

Kim Kardashian’s backside showed up on my horizon again, in the form of a Facebook post which referenced mating dances. A quick image search showed that she has been posing nude again.

If the display is part of a mating dance she must want to mate a lot. I ended up with the more realistic topic of ‘dad bods’, males who let their weight accumulate after their need for involvement in the mating dance ends. The figure of Jack ‘Kung-fu Panda’ Black is an affirmation. You can be overweight and likeable. It’s OK. Kim Kardashian’s backside is also an affirmation. It is larger than the backsides of most males.The phenomenon of Kardashian’s backside poses a number of questions though. Although it didn’t break the internet, as it grandiosely intended, it attracted a fair amount of hits by internet standards, and the fact that it still shows up, shows that there is still some mileage to be had. The question that I have to ask is whether the interest is because it is a backside or whether it is because it is Kim Kardashian’s backside?Bear with me. I’ll get serious in a few paragraphs. And yes, I checked. It’s not ‘bare with me’.If the interest is in the fact that it is a backside, we are in trouble, as it means that people are not skilled enough to do a web search for porn, and won’t have the smarts to google anything else. If the interest is in Kardashian’s backside, we are in trouble as it means people are grabbed by the idea that it is Kardashian exposing herself, so they probably don’t have much going through their heads. She doesn’t even act in kung-fu movies, and that means big trouble. At least Jack Black can make people laugh.Whatever the reason, it boils down to Orwellian ‘prolefeed’.For those of you who haven’t read 1984, prolefeed was a form of entertainment used by a fictional dictatorship to keep the minds of the masses off things like the economy. It consisted of low quality soaps and pornography. Kardashian’s life comes across like a soap opera, and the ‘positioning’ of her backside as a cultural phenomenon resembles pornography, even if you do need to call it art, to justify looking at it. Right now my mind is occupied with the idea of prolefeed as a political phenomenon. Kim Kardashian’s backside is just a useful metaphor. In the wake of the UK election, there is a lot of comment about dumbing-down in the process of the exercise of democracy. It seems that a large part of the voting was influenced by two photos. A negative photo of one of the candidates eating a bacon sandwich and a positive photo of the other candidate pointing at fish in a fish market had an impact on electoral choices.This is proof positive that prolefeed has a significant impact on political choice. Apparently economic choice didn’t factor into it. Perhaps if the losing party had decided to present some or other backside, the outcome may have been different. As Kim Kardashian is a US citizen, perhaps there might be something in it if she reveals, aside from her backside, whether she is a Republican or Democrat.If a photo of someone eating a bacon sandwich or pointing at fish can influence the outcome of an election, what is the point of considering economic choice? I think I will call this whole heap the ‘Kardashian Backside Theory of Political Choice’.Now that I am comfy with my dismissal of thought and economic choice in the political process, there is something to be said for prolefeed: that it takes minds away from potentially disastrous thinking.I can illustrate this with social media support for the Million Man March in Egypt, and the Arab Spring. While most of the world loudly proclaimed their support for democracy on that side of the Mediterranean, the Arab Spring actually paved the way for fundamentalist Islam. If Kardashian had been more timely in exposing her butt, the world might be a different place.As usual I end up with more questions than answers. At least I have the sure knowledge that politics actually makes an ass of everyone.